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Qualcomm Brings Network Testing Expertise From 130 Countries to Robotics

What happened

Park Jae-hyun, vice president of Qualcomm Korea, outlined the company's strategy on Nov. 10 during a Seoul National University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation session at Deep Dive Into (DETO) 2026, held at the Grand Hyatt Seoul: Qualcomm is applying network validation expertise accumulated through mobile chipset development to its robotics platforms, aiming to prevent critical robot malfunctions in extreme physical environments. Park said that when Qualcomm commercializes a smartphone chip it tests it on local networks in approximately 130 countries worldwide, identifying extreme corner cases such as communication interruptions and data loss, and that the same field validation capabilities and processes are now being applied directly to Qualcomm's next-generation robotics platforms. Qualcomm has extended its interoperability testing (IOT) framework to robotics and has partnered with robot manufacturers, including Neura Robotics, to establish a continuous feedback system that collects corner cases in real-world environments and uses digital twin simulators to retrain AI models. With its Dragonwing IQ10 chipset, the platform ensures signal integrity so data from up to 40 cameras, LiDAR units and tactile sensors reaches the main SoC without delay, and it incorporates a dedicated safety chip independent of the main SoC, using an isolated architecture to enable immediate emergency shutdown in the event of a malfunction or collision risk. Qualcomm's solutions are currently installed in approximately 500 million vehicles worldwide and power more than 90 million digital cockpit displays.